


Behind The Wall Of Sleep

by Sashataakheru



Series: The Disturbance Universe [3]
Category: The Move RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Community: spook_me, Dragons, Gen, Journal Entries, Nightmares, POV First Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological issues, Suicidal werewolf, Survival, zombie dragon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 12:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sashataakheru/pseuds/Sashataakheru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So how, exactly, do you cope after surviving two zombie apocalypses when the world you knew has been destroyed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind The Wall Of Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> In which, after several attempts, I finally find an idea that is horrific enough to be worthy of this challenge. Now with bonus zombies, as well as dragons and werewolves. 
> 
> Part of [The Disturbance AU](https://archiveofourown.org/series/6472). Set right after ['Brum and the Apocalypse'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/185451), and before ['Forever And A Day'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/692183). 
> 
> Prompts: 'Dragons', 'werewolves', [this card](http://s879.photobucket.com/user/spook_me/media/Spook_Me%20Tarot%20Cards/Major12_zps872def59.jpg.html), and [sort of this one](http://s879.photobucket.com/user/spook_me/media/Spook_Me%20Tarot%20Cards/page-od-swords-walks-where_zpsf98e22e3.jpg.html), for Spook Me 2013 + bonus zombies.

**August 17th, 2007** \- Haven't slept since we got back. Too wired. I keep seeing that zombie dragon in my mind. I can still smell the horrid rotting burning flesh. I don't know how to make it all go away. I see the others, and they can sleep. I think they might be coping with it better than I am, but I dare not say anything. I can't. The words get caught in my throat every time I try to tell them I can't sleep because of the dragon.

Well, that's not entirely true. I can lie in bed and doze for an hour or two, but I never really sleep. I never go deep enough to feel like I'm actually resting. I know it's not sustainable, but what can I do? There's nothing left. Everything's been destroyed. You never quite know how much you relied on those systems until they're all taken away from you. What I wouldn't kill for some sleeping pills right now.

We've been back in Birmingham five days now. We're not at that hostel anymore, not after that first night. After we took Brum back to the museum, Charlie said we needed somewhere safe. He didn't like being around people, so we packed up and left. I wasn't willing to argue, and to be honest, I wasn't all that thrilled at the prospect of living with people who hadn't done what we'd done. They'd all hid out while it was all raging on. We were down in Cardiff fighting zombies and dragons.

I don't know if wandering the streets was a good idea, though. Charlie and Bev didn't recognise the city they were in. They'd been wolves for forty years. They had no memory of what it had become. Trev, Ace, and I did our best to fill in the gaps, but it was hard, and it didn't really help. Nothing smelt right, or so Bev said.

We tried to take them to places they might have recognised, but it was pointless. They'd all been damaged, rebuilt beyond recognition, or destroyed in the storm. Charlie didn't want to stay in a place that was damaged. We settled in the first house he'd accept that was far enough from the damage that he could sleep.

I don't know how he could sleep, though. I couldn't sleep. On our way back, as we sailed up the Severn, I lay beside Charlie every night. I didn't know why I needed him, and he couldn't half speak anyway. I barely slept, and he just kept looking at me as if he wanted me to kill him. Tie him up and throw him in the river. But I never did. He still whines like a dog in his sleep. That bloody wolf hasn't left him yet, and I'm not sure it ever will. Charlie's not really there anymore.

Every time I close my eyes, I see that bloody dragon. It was so fast, and so vicious, I'm surprised we all managed to make it out alive. The smell is still caught in my memories, and sometimes, I think I can smell it on the breeze, but perhaps I'm just still imagining it. Perhaps it's just because of all the bodies still lying around the place, slowly rotting away. I feel like I'll never be free of it, that stench of rotting dragon flesh. It's infested my skin, my bones, and I'll never be clean again.

Even having to touch it while we pushed its body into the old moat at the castle was bad enough. You never quite understand dragon skin until you feel it. It's leathery all right, but its abrasive and sharp like sandpaper. It hurts to touch it. And of course it smells terrible when it's rotting away. I remember touching that undead dragon, and having flesh come away, stuck to my hand. It looks just like you'd expect rotting flesh to look like, and I don't know when I'll get that image out of my head, if I ever will.

It left a wound on my palm, once I'd got rid of it. It's still there, this red, raw mark like a brand across my left palm. It stings every now and then, and I'm not sure it will ever heal. I don't know how to treat it, except to rub some aloe into it and bandage it. It doesn't make it heal, but at least it doesn't sting so badly.

I still feel like there's danger all around us. The dragon was slayed, the zombies were stopped, but I'm back home now, and I'm just expected to be normal again? Life is meant to go on like it always has before the apocalypse?

No one really expects normal anymore, not when the destruction was so comprehensive, and the deaths so very great, but what do you do when you don't have to fight zombies? How do you even adjust? There was nothing to come back to but half a city full of damaged people.

I'm growing weary. I still jump at shadows. I see soldiers driving all through the streets, and somehow I'm meant to feel safe. They drive through burning bodies on pyres to clean up the rotting corpses. It's like they're not even people anymore, just bodies. They won't be buried, they won't have anyone remembering them, they'll just all be thrown on the fire. It'll take months to get rid of them all.

I feel trapped. I need to get away. I need to run and hide and pretend nothing happened for a while. But there's nowhere to go. There's nothing to survive on. I can't hunt, I can't scavenge, I'm too old to survive if I did leave. Looks like I'm stuck here, and it frustrates me. I don't know how much longer I can cope with this.

* * *

**August 18th** \- Dragons haunt my dreams. That red Welsh dragon keeps taking me to dark caves full of dragons, and they interrogate me, question me. They call me the Seer, and they tell me why I did not follow the oracles. They tell me I did not do what was asked of me.

I try every time to argue my case, but it never works. I am surrounded by vicious dragons seeking my demise. I am never entirely sure why they have turned on me. But they close in, and they ask for my sacrifice, threaten to throw me down into the pits of the Earth, and every time, I give in, willing to accept the peace they are offering. But it never comes. I always find myself awake, and alive, my mind filled with horror and death.

* * *

**August 21st** \- Charlie's doing alright, but I know he's scared. He keeps howling at the moon, whether it's full or not, terrified of it. Bev said it's just trauma, that he just wants to be back as a werewolf so he can cope better with what he witnessed, but I don't know. I don't know about those things.

If I sleep beside him, his dreams enter my mind. I don't know if it's his werewolf's telepathic ability, or just his trauma, or something else, but I can't abide being near him when I'm sleeping anymore. I see what he sees. I see Charlie during that first apocalypse forty years ago. I see him transforming into the wolf, and the pain it causes him. I see that wolf prowling, I see him killing, and not everyone he's ever killed has been a zombie.

It took me a few days to realise his wolf was also traumatised. I would see that wolf, and he'd be hiding away, scratching at his head, unable to get rid of the nightmares. He'd show me what he was seeing, begging me with the few words he was capable of using to kill him. The wolf was hurt, Charlie was hurt, and there wasn't anything I could do about it.

He'd grasp me as we slept. His hand would grab my arm, and there'd be bruises. He'd lie over me, or curl up close to me, as if he was begging me to take the dreams away. But I can't. There's nothing I can do about that.

I just wish he'd stop howling, though.

* * *

**August 22nd** \- The UN's here, with their trucks and food and peacekeepers. I can't abide the sight of them. The UN, here in my country, feeding us poor wretches as if we were casualties of war in some tiny dictatorial country tearing itself apart. It's not like I'm not grateful for their presence, and the aid they're bringing, but you never quite think it'll happen to you when you live in such a rich Western country. You never believe you'll ever need to rely on that support. But then the apocalypse came, and what choice do we have?

They're only providing survival. They're keeping us alive. But food won't fix the trauma. I still can't really cope with the numbers of dead. It's just too much. I can't bear the thought of just how few of us are left. I don't think anyone has really quite accepted that, either. People talk of other cities, of people camped out in the thousands in other places, because if we come to accept that we're all that's left, I think we'd all go mad with despair. We can't be the only ones left. We can't be. The scale of the destruction is beyond comprehension.

I see the hordes of zombies in my dreams, as well. I see myself killing them, their faces contorted with horror. I see their broken limbs flying everywhere, their bodies disintegrating and breaking as if they were made of sugar glass. Their faces are always screaming at me as they reach for me, and I'm so scared, I can't even move when their bony rotten fingers clasp around my neck.

\--

I keep wondering who they are, all the ones I killed. I know zombies are zombies, they're the undead, and it's different from murder, but the guilt is just impossible to shake. They weren't dead forever; they were alive once, and they were loved, and missed. Would anyone mourn for them? Will anyone mourn for the zombies, the poor wretches who were needlessly sacrificed by that dragon to the slaughter? The deaths they suffered - that I inflicted - would not be inflicted on the living. I did things I am very ashamed of, and I didn't know I had it in me to do them. I did not just kill, I dismembered bodies. I tortured them, I drowned them, I crushed their heads into the ground, I tore their bodies limb from limb. I was frightened and scared and trying to survive, but that doesn't justify what I did, does it? I feel like I am as dead and heartless as that zombie dragon.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so shocked, because I killed zombies back in 1967. But that was so long ago, it doesn't really feel real anymore. It didn't feel like the epic battle this one was. We fought zombies for a night in one small place. This time round, we fought zombies all the way from Brum to Cardiff, and all the way back again. I still don't know how I will be able to cope with that.

* * *

**August 25th** \- I went walking today, just to see if the world was still as terrible as I thought it was. Few people were around, but their faces were still rent numb with horror and fatigue. They walk like zombies now, shocked and unable to understand what happened. They can't explain it. I can't explain it, either, and I knew it was coming. I don't think anyone knows what it's like to fight a zombie until you've done it. It's killing, you know in your heart that you're killing people, but you rationalise it. They're zombies, they're trying to eat your flesh, kill them before they kill you.

But there's no threat now. There are no zombies to kill. I'm left with blood on my hands and no way to cope with that. I can't just section myself anymore. I can't get myself locked away in a safe place, and let them drug me into oblivion. I wouldn't mind it so much now if it made the horrors go away.

The dragons still torment me. When the zombie dragon isn't in my dreams, tearing me apart, it's those other dragons devouring me. I'm not sure what I've done to offend them, or if it's just my mind sorting through everything that's happened.

The dragons accuse me of torture. They say I was never meant to kill, that I disobeyed the oracles. But I never really know what they're talking about. All I ever knew was that the zombies would come again, and that we'd have to fight them. If I was meant to know more than that, the cards never said so. And yet, they punish me for what I did. They tear into my flesh now, inflicting upon me the fate I gave to the zombies. It never assuages the guilt, but perhaps it is all I deserve.

* * *

**August 27th** \- We're all broken. I live with my friends, my old, old friends, but we rarely speak now. Charlie's still heavily traumatised. Bev's better, but I think he's still coping with the transformation. He hasn't been human for forty years; it's hard work not being the werewolf anymore. I know Trev doesn't sleep well, though, and Ace has nightmares just as bad as I do. He wakes up screaming all the time. I don't know if I'm meant to be the one who's coping the best, who can support the rest of them, but I just can't. I keep hearing the screaming, smelling the burning flesh, and I'm always back in 1967 when the first zombies came, terrified.

The night we spent in that little gazebo, with Ace so broken he was practically catatonic, was the most frightening night of my life. We all felt so young, and the zombies just kept coming. Charlie did his best to kill them, and so did I. Bev was left trying to protect Ace while we slaughtered the undead.

The mist hung low to the ground once morning came. The park looked like a battlefield. I saw hundreds of bodies lying lifeless and still everywhere around us. It was as if we'd been attacked on all fronts and slaughtered an entire army that night. I don't know if that's true, but that's what it felt like. I can still see that image in my mind, seeing the contorted, broken bodies lying still and, well, dead. Proper dead, not zombies. But I still wasn't sure we were safe. I half-expected them to just wake up again, that once we began moving, they'd slowly come back to life and devour us.

They do that in my dreams. They come back to life, and they devour us.

Writing doesn't help. I have filled pages already with what I can bare to articulate, but it's no good. It just makes me relive it, but I just can't talk to anyone else right now, and so this is all I have. Perhaps one day the pain won't hurt so much.


End file.
